Moore than a track meet

Saturday

At most track and field meets, Cummings High School’s Isaiah Moore gets into what he calls his “zone” in the two minutes or so it takes to walk to the event.

It’s in those couple minutes that the rising senior can transition from joking with teammates — “I’m just talking to everybody,” he said — to 100 percent dialed in.

“It’s when I know I need to show my best, or at least push harder,” Moore said of the mindset.

It’s an unshakable focus that has led to Moore winning eight state championships between indoor and outdoor track and field in the past three years.

Earlier this month, Moore competed in a meet that offered a much longer time for him to find his focus — one that placed him on the world stage.

Moore won a bronze medal in the long jump at the World Youth Championships in Donetsk, Ukraine — a competition that featured athletes ages 16-17 from more than 100 countries. He also finished sixth in the 110-meter high hurdles.

Moore put forth what his coach called the best performance of his blossoming career.

“He had a lifetime meet and did it at the best time,” said Cummings coach Donnie Davis, who also coaches Moore with the Durham Striders track club.

Moore’s journey started outside Chicago in June during the qualifying meet for Team USA. It was there that Moore jumped 23 feet, 9 inches, to win the long jump and finished second the 110-meter hurdles (13.94 seconds).

Even with those results, Moore wasn’t a shoe-in for the national team. An announcement of which athletes would comprise Team USA came at a banquet hall, with the names listed in alphabetical order.

“It was real nerve-racking,” Moore said. “Everybody’s last name was M. So, they keep saying Ms, they’ve said three of them and all of a sudden they said Monroe, I was just like, ‘I didn’t make it. I didn’t make it.’ ”

Call it temporary amnesia by nerves that Moore figured his name came alphabetically before Michael Monroe of Manhattan, Ill.

“It’s kind of like you need to get out the alphabet,” Moore said with a chuckle. “One of my friends, his last name was Moore. If they had called his name first, I would have just … I probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

The next step for Moore was a weeklong track camp that turned into a sort of survival camp.

“It was terrible,” Moore said of staying in a dorm at Eastern Illinois. “The beds hurt, when you woke up you had the springs on your chest.”

It was a taste of college life for Moore and Team USA in more ways than shoddy mattresses, too.

There were no coaches in the literal sense. Although there were coaches listed with Team USA, they served more of a guidance role through the international process. Moore said the athletes served as coaches for themselves and teammates.

“I did my long jump practices most of the days and I just helped out with the girls with their jumps,” Moore said. “I helped my friend Keandre (Bates of El Paso, Texas) with his jump practices.”

Going to Ukraine meant a 12-hour plane ride to Istanbul, Turkey, about a 30-minute layover and another four hours on a plane to the former Soviet Union state. Once Moore and the rest of Team USA arrived, it was obvious this was no ordinary meet.

“We walked out and this dude started videotaping us, so we kind of felt like celebrities,” Moore said. “We got on the bus and. … We really didn’t notice we had a police escort until halfway through the ride, so we started trying to get pictures of it.

“Then we started looking at these signs that were really weird. There was one sign that had like an eyeball and a tongue, then ice cream beside it.”

Those weren’t the only quirks to Ukraine that Moore and Team USA noticed in the week practicing before the meet.

One day Moore and a few of his teammates explored a mall. They ran into more of the constant surveillance that had accompanied them during their first night in the country.

“We got followed by the cops the whole time. All of a sudden my friend drops his M&Ms all over the floor,” Moore said. “Dude starts laughing at us, and we’re kind of being loud picking them up, he’s just like, ‘Shhh.’ We didn’t know we couldn’t talk in the mall.”

The police escort continued through the mall, with some not-so-sneaky radio work used by cops when Moore and his teammates went to different floors. Unfortunately, Moore joked, they couldn’t help much when the athletes learned they had overpaid for knockoff designer sunglasses.

Other experiences included a hotel that seemed to deteriorate by the day. After a few days, the showers stopped working. Other issues included sinks that spouted brown water and bathtubs that produced yellow water.

For those travails, the hotel featured a bowling alley Moore said he visited at least three times. And it’s not like he was there to write a travel blog, so the negatives weighed little in perspective of the event.

By the time Moore was ready to compete in the long jump, he had no problem settling into a comfort zone.

On July 10, the first day of competition, Moore broke his personal record in the preliminaries for the long jump by jumping 24-4¼. His personal record was previously 23-10.

The next day, entering the finals with the sixth-best qualifying jump, Moore recorded a jump of 24-8½ to place third. He thrilled the crowd with what would have been a jump well past 25 feet on his first attempt, but fouled.

“The crowd clapped for me, it got really loud. When I jumped up and landed, all I heard was ‘Ohhhh,’ “ Moore said. “So I looked back at my jump and it was like 7 meters-90 (about 25 feet, 9 inches), and I saw them raise the flag and I was like ‘Uggg.’ That jump, I would have got gold automatically.”

Moore said his Team USA coach, A.J. James of Charlotte, told him to keep the same speed and repeat the form, which he did for his jump of 24-8½.

Russia’s Anatoliy Ryapolov won the event by jumping 7.79 meters. Moore tied with China’s Yaoqing Fang for second, but Fang had a tiebreaker because Fang’s second-best jump was better.

One of the aspects that helped Moore accomplish career bests was the extended time he spent in that aforementioned “zone.” Instead of having a two-minute walk to find his focus, Moore was in a call room.

“A lot more time to focus,” Moore said. “Just remember the long jump material.”

On the bus ride from the call room to the stadium, Moore was the only English-speaking athlete.

“Nobody really talked on the bus ride,” Moore said. “The one time I saw somebody talk was when they both spoke Spanish. They talked once.”

Another factor that led to Moore’s career performance was a cleared schedule. Instead of competing in multiple events in a span of a few hours, as is the case at high school meets, Moore zeroed in on long jump and hurdles on separate days.

“It probably played in a lot because when I did hurdles (at high school meets), I had high jump and long jump in between,” Moore said.

In the 110 hurdles, Moore qualified with a time a 13.66. It was an improvement of three-tenths of a second to beat his personal mark, which was set in qualifying for the team.

Moore had the slowest reaction time of eight runners in the final, which proved costly in his sixth-place finish.

“I didn’t get out as good, but when I ran, I still ran the same time,” Moore said. “I just don’t know what happened, I think my body was tired.

“The first race I ran 13.66 and was like ‘OK, that’s really good.’ But I still felt like, in my mind and in my body I wasn’t running like I (could do better).”

Jamaica’s Jaheel Hyde was the winner at 13.13, with Marlonn Humphrey of Hoover, Ala., second at 13.24.

Because of his performance in the long jump, Moore said he noticed a buzz around what he would do as an encore.

“More people knew that I could do something,” Moore said.

A staple of international competitions is trading uniforms and other memorabilia with athletes from other countries. Showing off Team USA gear can be traditional, but sporting a Jamaican or Kenyan running suit holds superior weight for track and field athletes.

Moore spent the last two days of the competition cheering for teammates and waiting for his chance to swap — trading was only allowed on the final day — because his role on the team was finished.

Or so he thought.

“We’re going to try to trick the Jamaicans and make them think there’s somebody on the relay team that they don’t know about,” Moore said, describing a last-minute plan. “So everybody in the relay pool has to warm up.

“I couldn’t go to the track. All my friends were going to trade.”

But things became more serious than a trick.

One of the relay runners for the event — a Swedish relay that goes 100 meters-200-300-400 — was missing. Moore and Jordan Jimerson of Edison, N.J., were suddenly in a precarious spot.

Moore and Jimerson’s warmup went to putting on spikes — a final step — before the missing teammate showed up. Moore, who rarely competes in relays, was able to laugh at the irony of almost having to run in a race he had never heard of.

The cost was minimal in general terms, but Moore was admittedly disheartened when he came to the trading area and was left with a bear market.

“By the time I get there, nobody is really trading anymore,” Moore said.

He ended up manufacturing a few trades that netted him two pins from the Bahamas and one each from China, Hong Kong and England. Moore also traded for a speedsuit and sweatpants.

But he was disappointed to have missed out on the Kenyans, who weren’t allowed to trade but ended up selling their gear. Or the Jamaicans, who were trading equipment that “still had their stuff with the tags on.” There was slight regret for following the rules, because twice Moore had turn down Swedish athletes asking for trades before the final day.

“I’m just in my mind thinking, ‘I only got a pair of sweatpants and a speedo, and pins,’ ” Moore said while trying, unsuccessfully, to suppress a laugh. “Y’all ain’t fair. I said, ‘I’m not going to be on any relay next time.’ ”

Moore would have entered his senior year at Cummings with incredible distinction and expectation without the trip to Ukraine — he has been the Most Valuable Performer at each of the last four track and field state championships (twice at 1-A/2-A/3-A indoor championships, twice at Class 2-A outdoor state championships).

Now he enters with a medal against the best competition in the world for his age bracket.

But Moore has a counter for his challengers, after he had a first-hand look at his top competition.

“It was a great experience. You learned a lot, you met a lot of people that you’ll probably see from now on throughout your track career,” Moore said. “You saw the competition across the world that you’ll see later on in life and it makes you want to be better, makes you want to push better.”

With than motivation, and the quiet drive to become even better, perhaps the best is yet to come. Stay tuned for Moore.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.